The State of Muds
George Reese
Given all the recent debate about 'the future of mudding' and so on, I
thought I might take the opportunity to create a sort of USENET 'white
paper' presenting some points of discussion outside of the flammable
context of some other threads.
Where We Are Today
As we approach the middle of 1997, muds have largely perfected a
specific realm: the realm of modeling complex social universes.
What a wonderfully vague phrase! In fact, I think there is no specific
one line phrase that captures what muds do well. But what do I mean by
the vague phrase above that I do think captures what they do?
By modeling, I mean that muds duplicate at a macro level either a real
or hypothetical universe. Ugh, more things that sound like
double-speak. This means, for example, that given a mud based on the
real world, that objects in the mud would behave at a macro level just
like they do in the real world. Most muds, however, choose to model
fictional universes, so the rules differ from the rules that govern our
universe. The important thing is that a mud captures those fictional
rules consistently throughout the universe. Finally, when I say at a
macro level, I mean that a certain level of detail is deemed
uninteresting and therefore not captured... details perhaps such as
blood clotting on a wound and then being re-opened as a scab.
By a complex social universe, I mean a universe whose center is the
interactions of both animate and sentient beings. The primary focus is
to model what happens when two social beings come together.
As I stated earlier, muds do this very well today. Given any possible
universe, a mud can be created to model it at this level. Some mud
technologies are more flexible in the sorts of universes they will
model; and some mud technologies are capable of more detail than others,
or of different kinds of detail.
In addition, some mud environments really enable creative people to
model universes without detailed coding knowledge or spending time
working on coding details. IMHO, this is a very important strength that
allows for a great deal more diversity in muds than most people suspect.
In particular, I do not think that a codebase has ANYTHING to do with
the creativity or uniqueness of a mud. It is what is done with that
codebase. And all across muds, I see some very awesome and creative
things being done that could not be done if people had to code these
things themselves. Unfortunately, the use of muds is so widespread that
all this creativity is largely diluted in a sea of boredom.
The Weaknesses of Graphical Muds
I want to address weaknesses by starting with a less controversial area
for this newsgroup, the realm of graphical muds. Perhaps the best known
graphical mud would be Quake and Doom. Graphical muds focus on the
presentation of the environment. Quake, for example, focuses on
presenting you with a true first-person visual representation of the
world.
The first problem these muds generally encounter is a seriously diluted
talent pool. While it takes equal talent to come up with truly
descriptive and imaginative text environments as it does to draw an
imaginative graphical environment, the minimal acceptable text area is a
lot lower than the minimally acceptable graphical area. In other words,
someone with poor writing skills can get away with writing for a text
mud a lot easier than someone with poor drawing skills can get away with
drawing for a graphical mud.
Another problem is the limited level of character interaction with its
environment; especially on a social level. This gets into the
difference of focus on details. A graphical mud is worried about
modeling the things in the world you can see, what happens if you run
into them, or what happens if you take your BFG 9000 and aim it at an
ogre. What happens when you tell one to fuck off, or even allowing you
to tell one to fuck off is not part of the model.
The Weaknesses of Text Muds
Text muds as well have two major weaknesses. The first problem lies in
accessibility and presentation. With that I mean how hard it is for a
new user to get into the mud world, understand it, and play it. To
start, getting into muds is difficult for a new user. First, text muds,
which are largely non-commercial, have a hard time even drawing the
attention of a public whose window to the Internet comes through a web
browser. Once the text mud gets the attention of a user, the text mud
attracts the user via telnet as an interface. There are two problems
with telnet as an interface:
* the default telnet which most users have access to barely works at
all and is impossible to use to play muds over time
* any generic telnet interface, good or bad, provides a confusing
interface for a largely non-technical public to use
Mud clients mitigate this a little. But they are generally very
generic, providing no real insight into the world being modeled by the
mud in question.
The second problem is the problem of ubiquity. Everyone is a king and
no one is a peasant in the mud world. In other words, the ratio of
players/muds is so low, that true creative talent, while there in
abundance, is diluted across too many muds. This leads to an appearant
lack of talent in the mud community and a distasteful homogeneity across
the mud world.
Technical Issues
So none of these problems *sound* like technical issues. But at their
heart, each one of them comes down to technical issues. Let's start
with my favourite subject, the presentation of muds. This ties into
both graphical and text mud issues. Specifically, either you end up
focused so heavily on the presentation layer that you have a smaller
talent base from which to pick, a smaller universe which you create, and
a universe with less interaction OR you forsake presentation and go with
a least common denominator approach that leaves you with a cookie-cutter
world.
The issue is how to enhance presentation while keeping a low bar for
creative talent requirements and retaining the high level of interaction
in a text universe. Why is this technical?
Well, first, there is the issue of how you create *any* interface. If
you are going to go beyond telnet, then you ostensibly want something
that the entire internet community can access. This means writing
portable client systems. This is a hard technical issue.
Once we have overcome that, we have the question of how to enable the
creation of universe elements by non-technical people. The technical
issue here is creating a system that hides the technical issues from the
end developer. Furthermore, we also need a way of mapping these
universe elements into a presentation. Both of these are very technical
and very hard questions. And solving them goes a long way to solving
the must fundamental problems that muds face today.
Notice I have said nothing in the technical section about
multi-threading or distributed mud systems. While interesting technical
issues, they have no effect whatsoever on the basic problems facing muds
or the user experience with a mud.
Marketing
Another place where muds could use some help is in the marketing
department. Getting the attention of people to muds. This is a hard
issue in general. I will leave this to another discussion to address.
I think I have babbled enough as it is.
--
George Reese (bo...@imaginary.com) http://www.imaginary.com/~borg
ik ben de borg
Brian James Green
First, I would like to take the time to thank Mr. Reese for his
intelligent commentary on MUD work today. It's articles like these that
make me thankful I didn't killfile him years ago. ;)
In <335A41A4...@imaginary.com> George Reese <bo...@imaginary.com> writes:
>Where We Are Today
>As we approach the middle of 1997, muds have largely perfected a
>specific realm: the realm of modeling complex social universes.
I agree totally. One of the strongest elements of MUDs is the social
aspects. I think that many MUDs capture the essence of the tabletop RPG
socialization that occurs. Also, most of the strict role-playing
focused MUDs give us the chance to act out a character with a living,
chaotic human on the other end reacting to our character as their
character. This social interaction makes a MUD more interesting than a
simple commercial computer game.
Perhaps MUDs should focus on this aspect. How can we make it easier for
people to talk and to interact without "requiring" it? When people
interact, the essence of MUDding shines through.
>The Weaknesses of Graphical Muds
I'm not sure if I would consider the first person perspective computer
games as "MUDs" exactly. Agreed, this is the only real basis of
comparison against traditional text-based MUDs. I believe that these
games are not on par for several reasons, many of which Mr. Reese
mentions in his article.
>The Weaknesses of Text Muds
Without re-hashing the old "telnet sucks" debate, I'll have to agree
that text-based MUDs through raw telnet aren't the prettiest things in
the world by a long shot. I remember getting extremly frustrated by the
incoming text interrupting what I was typing at the moment. I'm sure
many new users feel the same way, and have less patience with it given
the nature of the Web.
However, does this mean every new MUD had to have a custom client to go
with it? The generic clients may not represent things in the MUD
correctly if they are different from the "norm". What if I use body hit
locations instead of general hit points? A generic client may be
confused by this change. So, now, in order to draw people to the MUD I
design, I have to not only come up with a good MUD world (perhaps with
some unique mechanics to keep it unique from other MUDs), but I also
have to design a good client, too? This seems to go counter to the
purpose of making MUD design more accessible to creative yet
non-technical people.
>The second problem is the problem of ubiquity. Everyone is a king and
>no one is a peasant in the mud world. In other words, the ratio of
>players/muds is so low, that true creative talent, while there in
>abundance, is diluted across too many muds. This leads to an appearant
>lack of talent in the mud community and a distasteful homogeneity across
>the mud world.
I think this is one of the MOST important issues addressed in this
article (see also the "stock muds, the my-way highway" thread). Too
many people want to do a MUD in their personal image. So, now we have
creative but non-technical people setting up stock-muds with interesting
areas but nothing truly original in terms of mechanics, technical but
uncreative (or, not as creative as other people) building the perfect
set of mechanics to complement a rather lackluster world, and
power-trippers that have no creativity or coding ability that just want
to have a MUD so they can boss people around and hit on MUD women.
I think that often it's not an issue of "too many cooks spoil the stew",
but one of "I'm the only decent cook, so I'm going to make things my
way!" Many MUDs I've played or worked on have come to a abysmal low due
to political infighting and the swinging of giant...um...egos. Heck, I
know that personally I'm attached to my pet ideas. It takes quite a
bit of arguing before the co-designers at Demonscape can talk me down
from a truly moronic idea that I thought of. (Of course, it goes both
ways. :) I think people need to realize that they can't do everything,
regardless of what they think. I know I'm a pretty creative designer
with a mind for balance and interaction, but I'm no where near as good a
coder as several other people I know.
Perhaps the MUD community should start doing what some members of the
individual computer game programmers have done: Start lists of people
that are good at something and can lend their abilities to a project.
So, we could hook up the good designers with the amazing coders and come
up with a truly excellent production, instead of the talented designer
putting together a hack of a MUD with an interesting story and getting a
story that is wasted on a bunch of broken mechanics.
>Technical Issues
>So none of these problems *sound* like technical issues. But at their
>heart, each one of them comes down to technical issues. Let's start
>with my favourite subject, the presentation of muds. This ties into
>both graphical and text mud issues. Specifically, either you end up
>focused so heavily on the presentation layer that you have a smaller
>talent base from which to pick, a smaller universe which you create, and
>a universe with less interaction OR you forsake presentation and go with
>a least common denominator approach that leaves you with a cookie-cutter
>world.
>The issue is how to enhance presentation while keeping a low bar for
>creative talent requirements and retaining the high level of interaction
>in a text universe. Why is this technical?
>Well, first, there is the issue of how you create *any* interface. If
>you are going to go beyond telnet, then you ostensibly want something
>that the entire internet community can access. This means writing
>portable client systems. This is a hard technical issue.
>Once we have overcome that, we have the question of how to enable the
>creation of universe elements by non-technical people. The technical
>issue here is creating a system that hides the technical issues from the
>end developer. Furthermore, we also need a way of mapping these
>universe elements into a presentation. Both of these are very technical
>and very hard questions. And solving them goes a long way to solving
>the must fundamental problems that muds face today.
I believe the problem with this argument is that you are trying to do
the impossible. While I admire Nightmare's efforts in making MUDs more
interesting and accessible, I think it's goals were flawed. Just like
in traditional paper RPGs, there is no "best" or "perfect" system for
every game for every person. Some people actually *like* AD&D mechanics
and system, while others prefer GURPS. Some people think that Babylon 5
setting is cool, but want to use World of Darkness mechanics. There is
no one set of mechanics that perfectly handles "everything" in every
game, likewise I don't think there can be a single system of MUD
mechanics that is ideal for every MUD designed.
For a short exercise, consider magic systems. There's the level-based
AD&D magic system, there's the traditional MUD sp-based system, there's
supposedly a "channeling" system where spells depend on the area where
you are standing, etc. What if I wanted a new system for magic, like
blood magic that requires the blood of a (once) living creature? Should
the "perfect" MUD have modules for these things so the non-technical
person doesn't have to dirty his or her hands with code in order produce
the magic system that would fit in the world? Could this universal
mechanic handle all possible magic systems? I think the answer is: no.
Therefore, I think that we need to get people with talent working
together to build individual MUDs. People need to design what they are
competent at and find others to fill in for other jobs. But, until
people can learn to trust each other and respect the ideas of others,
this goal might be a long ways away. But, perhaps if we could at least
get small groups of people working together, then we could go for larger
projects involving more people.
>Marketing
>Another place where muds could use some help is in the marketing
>department. Getting the attention of people to muds. This is a hard
>issue in general. I will leave this to another discussion to address.
I agree, but how do you gain people's attention? Perhaps we could start
focusing on bringing in computer-literate RPGers. Start asking RPG
resource pages to put MUD links on their pages. Pehaps we could start a
resource page for MUDs, listing things like where to find telnet (or
other) clients for the platforms their on, general hints about how to
survive on a MUD (like what "help", "say", etc are for), etc. Then,
start looking for computer gamers. Then, expand from there. I'm really
no expert on "reaching" people, so I'll leave further speculation up to
others.
Comments welcomed. :) Flames ignored.
"And I now wait / to shake the hand of fate...." -"Defender", Manowar
Brian Green, pch...@iastate.edu aka Psychochild
|\ _,,,---,,_ *=* Morpheus, my kitten, says "Hi!" *=*
ZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ "If you two are so evil, then why don't
|,4- ) )-,_..;\ ( `'-' you just...EAT THIS KITTEN!"
'---''(_/--' `-'\_) - "The Tick", Saturday morning cartoon.
Check out: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~pchild to find out about me!
Narien
I stand amazed. Old Flaming George can write a post without
reverting back to a Neanderthal. If only he would talk like an
intelligant being more often and refrain from his childish ego-flames.
Narien (dben...@mc.net)
George Reese
I simply cannot make a post in this newsgroup without some jerk taking a
shot at me. This is just way too comedic.
Chip Paul
George Reese wrote:
>
> Narien wrote:
> >
> > I stand amazed. Old Flaming George can write a post without
> > reverting back to a Neanderthal. If only he would talk like an
> > intelligant being more often and refrain from his childish ego-flames.
> >
> > Narien (dben...@mc.net)
>
> I simply cannot make a post in this newsgroup without some jerk taking a
> shot at me. This is just way too comedic.
>
I'm gonna have to agree with George here, it seems like you (Narien) are
the one starting hte flaming.
George Reese
Brian James Green wrote:
> In <335A41A4...@imaginary.com> George Reese <bo...@imaginary.com> writes:
>
> >Where We Are Today
> >As we approach the middle of 1997, muds have largely perfected a
> >specific realm: the realm of modeling complex social universes.
>
> I agree totally. One of the strongest elements of MUDs is the social
> aspects. I think that many MUDs capture the essence of the tabletop RPG
> socialization that occurs. Also, most of the strict role-playing
> focused MUDs give us the chance to act out a character with a living,
> chaotic human on the other end reacting to our character as their
> character. This social interaction makes a MUD more interesting than a
> simple commercial computer game.
>
> Perhaps MUDs should focus on this aspect. How can we make it easier for
> people to talk and to interact without "requiring" it? When people
> interact, the essence of MUDding shines through.
The essence of mudding, IMHO, is solid. I believe, as my post spoke to,
that the issue of how that essence is presented to the user. Graphical
muds choose to forsake the solid basis which text muds have for a
simpler universe.
> >The Weaknesses of Graphical Muds
>
> I'm not sure if I would consider the first person perspective computer
> games as "MUDs" exactly. Agreed, this is the only real basis of
> comparison against traditional text-based MUDs. I believe that these
> games are not on par for several reasons, many of which Mr. Reese
> mentions in his article.
I think they are mud games exactly because they are modeling a universe.
I do believe they are less successful at that modeling than text games.
But that does not make them any less mud games.
> >The Weaknesses of Text Muds
>
> Without re-hashing the old "telnet sucks" debate, I'll have to agree
> that text-based MUDs through raw telnet aren't the prettiest things in
> the world by a long shot. I remember getting extremly frustrated by the
> incoming text interrupting what I was typing at the moment. I'm sure
> many new users feel the same way, and have less patience with it given
> the nature of the Web.
I remember being overwhelmed at the interface back when all internet
interfaces were like that. That is because the complexity of user
interaction with the system plus the complexity of the interface is just
way too much to handle. And, as you point out, today's users are even
less familiar with this sort of interface than most of us might have
been in the pre-Web years of the Internet.
> However, does this mean every new MUD had to have a custom client to go
> with it?
My question is: why is this a bad thing? Traditionally, games come with
their own custom interfaces. A custom interface makes the user
interface more tightly integrated into the game.
While this is my belief, it is certainly not the only solution. My
point for this post was to introduce the problem, which was the user
interface. I don't want to get bogged down into debating my
controversial solution.
>The generic clients may not represent things in the MUD
> correctly if they are different from the "norm". What if I use body hit
> locations instead of general hit points? A generic client may be
> confused by this change. So, now, in order to draw people to the MUD I
> design, I have to not only come up with a good MUD world (perhaps with
> some unique mechanics to keep it unique from other MUDs), but I also
> have to design a good client, too? This seems to go counter to the
> purpose of making MUD design more accessible to creative yet
> non-technical people.
I don't think so. You do not have to have everyone on the mud building
the user interface; in fact, you could have a client-side mudlib (which
is what Nightmare VI would have included). In other words, objects for
building clients integrated into your mud.
Yes, I think you have stated this problem very well.
> Perhaps the MUD community should start doing what some members of the
> individual computer game programmers have done: Start lists of people
> that are good at something and can lend their abilities to a project.
> So, we could hook up the good designers with the amazing coders and come
> up with a truly excellent production, instead of the talented designer
> putting together a hack of a MUD with an interesting story and getting a
> story that is wasted on a bunch of broken mechanics.
That would be a good idea... I don't think people will go for it though
:)
Nightmare's goals were never (in any of the releases ever done) to
address the issues stated here. They were to create a complete object
library for modeling the world. I think Nightmare and several other
systems have managed to get this right.
> Just like
> in traditional paper RPGs, there is no "best" or "perfect" system for
> every game for every person. Some people actually *like* AD&D mechanics
> and system, while others prefer GURPS. Some people think that Babylon 5
> setting is cool, but want to use World of Darkness mechanics. There is
> no one set of mechanics that perfectly handles "everything" in every
> game, likewise I don't think there can be a single system of MUD
> mechanics that is ideal for every MUD designed.
Out of the box? No, but neither Nightmare or any other system is
designed to do so out of the box.
[ points about getting people to work together deleted ]
I agree that a good step would be to get the more talented people in the
community working together on a single project.
> >Marketing
> >Another place where muds could use some help is in the marketing
> >department. Getting the attention of people to muds. This is a hard
> >issue in general. I will leave this to another discussion to address.
>
> I agree, but how do you gain people's attention? Perhaps we could start
> focusing on bringing in computer-literate RPGers. Start asking RPG
> resource pages to put MUD links on their pages. Pehaps we could start a
> resource page for MUDs, listing things like where to find telnet (or
> other) clients for the platforms their on, general hints about how to
> survive on a MUD (like what "help", "say", etc are for), etc. Then,
> start looking for computer gamers. Then, expand from there. I'm really
> no expert on "reaching" people, so I'll leave further speculation up to
> others.
I really do not have a good answer for this problem. It is something
IMHO worth some serious discussion.
Michael Sellers
First, my compliments to George: From skimming this post, it appears to
have a nice signal to noise ratio, with little to no gratuitous or
abrasive flammage. Well done.
I don't have time to respond to the whole thing, but a few thoughts are
below:
George Reese wrote:
> Where We Are Today
> As we approach the middle of 1997, muds have largely perfected a
> specific realm: the realm of modeling complex social universes.
I disagree. :) Current MUDs are good to excellent models of shallow
universes: there is little in the way of homeostatic regulation of
things such as ecologies, economies, or even single creatures. I would
agree that MUDs currently provide a compelling imaginative and social
experience, and many provide the opportunity for an informal and ongoing
team to add to the universe.
> ...
> The Weaknesses of Graphical Muds
> I want to address weaknesses by starting with a less controversial area
> for this newsgroup, the realm of graphical muds. Perhaps the best known
> graphical mud would be Quake and Doom. Graphical muds focus on the
> presentation of the environment. Quake, for example, focuses on
> presenting you with a true first-person visual representation of the
> world.
Again, I disagree. Quake and Doom are graphical games, but they are
_not_ MUDs: there is no persistance of the world between
player-sessions, there is almost zero social interaction, and in any
real sense there is no "world" other than the limited levels traversed
by the players. IMO, all three of these things are necessary for
something to be a MUD.
Graphical MUDs would include Meridian 59, probably The Realm, maybe Dark
Sun Online, and probably games like Ultima Online and Azaria if they
ever see the light of day -- and none of which you mentioned (there has
been _far_ too much criticizing of graphical MUDs from the text crowd
from those who have never even _tried_ a graphical MUD!). These games
are MUDs in every sense except that they are not written off of an
existing driver or lib, and currently provide no facility for outside
coding (think of this as a very insular set of imps).
These graphical MUDs -- I can speak about Meridian first-hand -- also do
not have any of the weaknesses you mention. For example, the social
interaction on Meridian equals or exceeds anything I've ever seen on a
text MUD. Many text MUD-devotees don't want to believe that, but I can
only shrug my shoulders in the absence of their experience.
I won't argue your assessment of the weaknesses of text MUDs. However,
I would say that the biggest overarching weakness is that the
simulations and world-mechanics remain shallow. I don't want to go into
this in too much detail, but I think this is one of the next big areas
for development.
> ...If
> you are going to go beyond telnet, then you ostensibly want something
> that the entire internet community can access. This means writing
> portable client systems. This is a hard technical issue.
Or you just write for Win95/NT, which some see as a sell-out. You
proceed from the premise that most or all MUDs are hobbyist MUDs. This
is changing already, and will change more in the future.
> Once we have overcome that, we have the question of how to enable the
> creation of universe elements by non-technical people.
Yes, _this_ is an interesting issue...
--
Mike Sellers Internet Game Designer msel...@ricochet.net
"If you're not confused, you don't know what's going on."
-- could have been said about the online entertainment industry
jav...@iaxs.net
I don't really post here much, because mostly the posts seem to be a
contest of, to use a bit of easily understood imagery here, my penis is
bigger than your penis, when neither of the parties is doing anything
with their penis except yank on it for their own gratification. I'm
refuse to take sides on this issue because there is NO innocent party.
To George well if you feel it is your given right to condescendingly
give your opinion in a less than constructive manner and expect them to
take it, then you must acknowledge the fact that they in return have the
same right and expect that it will inevitably happen. To Narien that
was a totally unecessary comment that was double edged, asking for the
flame wars to continue which serves no productive purpose. To Chip
Paul, who is his own mind was performing a good deed, sent yet another
double edged statement yet again escalating the flame wars. Opinions
are great so are strong opinions, but the flames just show how insecure
a person is, how low their self esteem is, and how much "penis envy"
they have to return to my crude, and I apologize for that, but effective
imagery. Personally I don't mind the strong opinions, it generally
shows that a person has a true interest in the subject. Personal
attacks on a person for those opinions, especially when no personal
knowledge of the people is had, is not only inexcusable, but simply
intolerable.
Javajoe
FIZZIX
In article <335A751F...@mc.net>, Narien <dben...@mc.net> wrote:
> I stand amazed. Old Flaming George can write a post without
>reverting back to a Neanderthal. If only he would talk like an
>intelligant being more often and refrain from his childish ego-flames.
>
>
>Narien (dben...@mc.net)
>
I don't believe this. Flaming him for being nice? What the hell?
-griffie
Kevin M. Gilbert
George Reese (bo...@imaginary.com) wrote:
: Narien wrote:
: >
: > I stand amazed. Old Flaming George can write a post without
: > reverting back to a Neanderthal. If only he would talk like an
: > intelligant being more often and refrain from his childish ego-flames.
prompts you to get on his ass?
: >
: > Narien (dben...@mc.net)
: George Reese (bo...@imaginary.com) http://www.imaginary.com/~borg
^^^^^^^^^^^^
I know you _hate_ these morons about as much as I do George :)
*sarcastic grin*
--Kevin
Martin Keegan
> As we approach the middle of 1997, muds have largely perfected a
> specific realm: the realm of modeling complex social universes.
Nitpick: most muds don't model real worlds well because they don't have
inflation. The point of a lot of them (read: Dikus) is to have a good
time by gaining points and levels and abilities. All good fun, and
I play Dikus more than most other types of mud. However, resources
in the mud universe are always being consumed, and then magically
replaced by restocking the database. Instead of prices rising, new
resources are magically created - there's more money around, but
the prices of things have to remain largely constant otherwise newbies
will be unable to buy anything (that, or give the newbies ever larger
amounts of money).
Or DO things remain in statis? I've heard of people adding more levels
once too many players reached the top. Basically, these worlds survive
by constantly changing.
> In particular, I do not think that a codebase has ANYTHING to do with
> the creativity or uniqueness of a mud. It is what is done with that
> codebase. And all across muds, I see some very awesome and creative
Do you think that some codebases are more likely to produce
uninteresting muds than others?
BTW, your "dilution" stuff is music to my ears :)
Mk
--
http://cyburbia.net.au/~martin/
http://cyburbia.net.au/~martin/mudtree.html
Michael Tillmann
In article <335A41A4...@imaginary.com>, bo...@imaginary.com says...
Just thought I'd jump in and comment on this article. I've not been reading
this newsgroup long but thought I'd stop my lurking and put in my two
cyber-cents.
>Given all the recent debate about 'the future of mudding' and so on, I
>thought I might take the opportunity to create a sort of USENET 'white
>paper' presenting some points of discussion outside of the flammable
>context of some other threads.
>
>Where We Are Today
>As we approach the middle of 1997, muds have largely perfected a
>specific realm: the realm of modeling complex social universes.
Well, I would agree with some reservations. My experience is almost entirely
with MUSHes, so I can only comment on those though.
[Some stuff edited]
>By a complex social universe, I mean a universe whose center is the
>interactions of both animate and sentient beings. The primary focus is
>to model what happens when two social beings come together.
>
>As I stated earlier, muds do this very well today. Given any possible
>universe, a mud can be created to model it at this level. Some mud
>technologies are more flexible in the sorts of universes they will
>model; and some mud technologies are capable of more detail than others,
>or of different kinds of detail.
This is what initially drew me to MUSHes. When I saw this: I thought
ah-hah!, I can play a fictional character in a in-depth environment. From
what I've seen a MUSH can do this very well, though it is a challenge on the
smaller games due to the smaller playerbases and the way these smaller games
tend to overbuild, spreading out players over too large a virtual area.
>The Weaknesses of Graphical Muds
>I want to address weaknesses by starting with a less controversial area
>for this newsgroup, the realm of graphical muds. Perhaps the best known
>graphical mud would be Quake and Doom. Graphical muds focus on the
>presentation of the environment. Quake, for example, focuses on
>presenting you with a true first-person visual representation of the
>world.
>
>The first problem these muds generally encounter is a seriously diluted
>talent pool. While it takes equal talent to come up with truly
>descriptive and imaginative text environments as it does to draw an
>imaginative graphical environment, the minimal acceptable text area is a
>lot lower than the minimally acceptable graphical area. In other words,
>someone with poor writing skills can get away with writing for a text
>mud a lot easier than someone with poor drawing skills can get away with
>drawing for a graphical mud.
>
>Another problem is the limited level of character interaction with its
>environment; especially on a social level. This gets into the
>difference of focus on details. A graphical mud is worried about
>modeling the things in the world you can see, what happens if you run
>into them, or what happens if you take your BFG 9000 and aim it at an
>ogre. What happens when you tell one to fuck off, or even allowing you
>to tell one to fuck off is not part of the model.
I generally don't classify those kinds of games as MU*s. There is very, very
limited interaction from what I've seen between players in any manner except
the barest forms. There isn't any real social interaction, which is what I
use to basicly define a MU*.
>The Weaknesses of Text Muds
>Text muds as well have two major weaknesses. The first problem lies in
>accessibility and presentation. With that I mean how hard it is for a
>new user to get into the mud world, understand it, and play it. To
>start, getting into muds is difficult for a new user. First, text muds,
>which are largely non-commercial, have a hard time even drawing the
>attention of a public whose window to the Internet comes through a web
>browser. Once the text mud gets the attention of a user, the text mud
>attracts the user via telnet as an interface. There are two problems
>with telnet as an interface:
>* the default telnet which most users have access to barely works at
> all and is impossible to use to play muds over time
>* any generic telnet interface, good or bad, provides a confusing
> interface for a largely non-technical public to use
>
>Mud clients mitigate this a little. But they are generally very
>generic, providing no real insight into the world being modeled by the
>mud in question.
Hm. Well, I guess I agree. I've been MUSHing now for over a year and I've
basicly forgotten the days of Telnet when I was just starting out. I think
that once you get a servicable client things improve a lot. Though those
initial days are probably when you lose a lot of players who just don't have
the patience to learn the nuanaces or to even learn what a MU* client is.
Also, your point about MU*s having a hard time attracting attention from the
public is something I worry about myself, being God of one MUSH. I try to
get players by spreading around word of mouth to other MUSHes and posting a
few advertisements here and there. But this generally only gets players who
are already very busy playing characters on other games. I find that these
alts are good RPers a lot of the time, but the amount of energy and time
they can devote to developing a world is severely diminished.
>The second problem is the problem of ubiquity. Everyone is a king and
>no one is a peasant in the mud world. In other words, the ratio of
>players/muds is so low, that true creative talent, while there in
>abundance, is diluted across too many muds. This leads to an appearant
>lack of talent in the mud community and a distasteful homogeneity across
>the mud world.
Basicly what I just said above. There are so many games and so few players
it would seem. The only way that I could see to solve that would be to
either reduce the number of games, or increase the number of players. :) I
think I prefer the second choice. Only problem is how to manage it. :)
Thanks for the interesting article, George.
Ned Lovely
Brian James Green wrote:
> Perhaps the MUD community should start doing what some members of the
> individual computer game programmers have done: Start lists of people
> that are good at something and can lend their abilities to a project.
Better yet, a new mud, written from scratch. In Java to minimize
platform headaches, with a decent Java client. Make it modular so that
people can plug in their own combat scheme, or magic scheme, or races,
or parser, or whatever. Provide 2-3 samples of each.
Only give people licences to it if they have three people... A coder,
and two creative types. Maintain some control over the muds by
withdrawing the licence from muds that are going downhill / not
maintained.
It'd never happen, but I still think it would be pretty cool.
Go for it people, I'm wearing asbestos undies.
> So, we could hook up the good designers with the amazing coders and > come
> up with a truly excellent production, instead of the talented designer
> putting together a hack of a MUD with an interesting story and getting > a
> story that is wasted on a bunch of broken mechanics.
I don't think people could so easily set aside their egos.
> I agree, but how do you gain people's attention? Perhaps we could > start
> focusing on bringing in computer-literate RPGers. Start asking RPG
> resource pages to put MUD links on their pages. Pehaps we could start > a
> resource page for MUDs, listing things like where to find telnet (or
> other) clients for the platforms their on, general hints about how to
> survive on a MUD (like what "help", "say", etc are for), etc. Then,
> start looking for computer gamers. Then, expand from there. I'm > really
> no expert on "reaching" people, so I'll leave further speculation up
> to others.
I'd want to start with a really nice Java telnet client. I'd want a
standard for accessing the help system, so that I could access online
help without clogging up the screen I'm trying to RP in. I'd want a
standard for getting whatever vital stats the mud considered vital, so
that I could make a nice graphical status bar. I'd want a standard way
of getting the exits from the room, so that I could provide a nice,
clickable exit list. I'd want a standard way of listing the other
objects and players in the room, so that I could put them in clickable
lists. I'd want to find all of the legal verbs for the room, so that I
could allow tab completion. I'd want a standard way to filter chat
channels so that I could place them in seperate windows. I'd want a
way to add standard extensions. <takes a breath>
I think I'm getting off track here :). Basically, I think a nice
interface is needed. What needs to be eliminated is people who click on
a telnet:// link, and then quickly close the window because its scary
looking.
Once we have a product that actually was usable, we'd want to pick a
group of people to drag into the fold. Thats about all the marketing I
know ;). Actually, we're supposed to find a market, and then we're
supposed to make the product...
--
njl
Lisa
In article <335AAC...@ricochet.net.nospam>,
msel...@ricochet.net.nospam wrote:
> George Reese wrote:
> > Where We Are Today
> > As we approach the middle of 1997, muds have largely perfected a
> > specific realm: the realm of modeling complex social universes.
>
> I disagree. :) Current MUDs are good to excellent models of shallow
> universes: there is little in the way of homeostatic regulation of
> things such as ecologies, economies, or even single creatures. I would
> agree that MUDs currently provide a compelling imaginative and social
> experience, and many provide the opportunity for an informal and ongoing
> team to add to the universe.
and then Martin Keegan writes:
>Nitpick: most muds don't model real worlds well because they don't have
>inflation.
It's all ending up in a discussion about realism in MU*s, which was not
the original issue, as far as I understand it.
"Complex social universes" imply nothing but *social* universes. It
doesn't matter to a social universe whether you can shit and pee or have
all sorts of wonderful realistic features. It's about social interaction,
and MU*s have that, despite lack of inflation etc... please start another
thread that's called "realism in MU*s", or something... it doesn't have
anything to do with social environments :-)
And then javajoe burst out in frustration over the flaming going on here:
>I don't really post here much, because mostly the posts seem to be a
>contest of, to use a bit of easily understood imagery here, my penis is
>bigger than your penis, when neither of the parties is doing anything
>with their penis except yank on it for their own gratification.
Please. I don't have a penis. When I flame, there has to be another
reason than that. Think logically, and be more imaginative next time ;-)
/Lisa
Ps: I have the firmest tits on this side of the Atlantic, shuddup if you
think otherwise!!
Ned Lovely
Michael Sellers wrote:
[snip]
> I disagree. :) Current MUDs are good to excellent models of shallow
> universes: there is little in the way of homeostatic regulation of
> things such as ecologies, economies, or even single creatures. I > would
> agree that MUDs currently provide a compelling imaginative and social
> experience, and many provide the opportunity for an informal and
> ongoing team to add to the universe.
[snip]
> However,
> I would say that the biggest overarching weakness is that the
> simulations and world-mechanics remain shallow. I don't want to go
> into
> this in too much detail, but I think this is one of the next big areas
> for development.
While I think having a "real" mud economy, where raw materials
were actually gathered and manufactured would be awesome, I have to
question its usefulness. Coding a self-balancing economy is DECIDEDLY
non-trivial.
I see two main problems with the "more realism, more realism" cry.
1). This is a fantasy. I don't want my character to get tired, so that I
have to sit there and waste real-life time as he rests. I want to spend
all of my time tromping around and interacting with monsters and other
players.
2). It doesn't add anything to the game. The complex statistics involved
in combat might make the coders and imps salivate, but as a player, I
don't really care. I think having complex systems, or more accurately,
exposing them to the user, detracts from the realism.
While a self-balancing economy would probably require months of tweaking
and fine-tuning to get it right, in the end, the players don't actually
see much.
Spend your time writing new areas, and adding cool and interesting
objects and mobs. Your players will appreciate it more.
--
njl
George Reese
Martin Keegan wrote:
>
> > As we approach the middle of 1997, muds have largely perfected a
> > specific realm: the realm of modeling complex social universes.
>
> inflation.
Huh? Re-read my post. Modeling X does not mean having every attribute
of X be true for the model of X. Having inflation or lacking inflation
has nothing to do with whether mud software is modeling a complex social
universe. Furthermore, my point was that mud software had the
capability to model such things--they can easily model inflation if they
want. Finally, Nightmare muds do have inflation.
> The point of a lot of them (read: Dikus) is to have a good
> time by gaining points and levels and abilities. All good fun, and
> I play Dikus more than most other types of mud. However, resources
> in the mud universe are always being consumed, and then magically
> replaced by restocking the database. Instead of prices rising, new
> resources are magically created - there's more money around, but
> the prices of things have to remain largely constant otherwise newbies
> will be unable to buy anything (that, or give the newbies ever larger
> amounts of money).
>
> Or DO things remain in statis? I've heard of people adding more levels
> once too many players reached the top. Basically, these worlds survive
> by constantly changing.
I think you have a rather limit mudding experience. Many people have
dealt with these issues in many different ways.
> > In particular, I do not think that a codebase has ANYTHING to do with
> > the creativity or uniqueness of a mud. It is what is done with that
> > codebase. And all across muds, I see some very awesome and creative
>
> Do you think that some codebases are more likely to produce
> uninteresting muds than others?
Yes, but I am not interested in getting into server wars in this thread.
> BTW, your "dilution" stuff is music to my ears :)
You should hear me sing.
Michael Sellers
Lisa wrote:
> msel...@ricochet.net.nospam wrote:
> > George Reese wrote:
> > > As we approach the middle of 1997, muds have largely perfected a
> > > specific realm: the realm of modeling complex social universes.
> >
> > universes: there is little in the way of homeostatic regulation of
> > things such as ecologies, economies, or even single creatures. I would
> > agree that MUDs currently provide a compelling imaginative and social
> > experience, and many provide the opportunity for an informal and ongoing
> > team to add to the universe.
>
> >inflation.
>
> the original issue, as far as I understand it.
> "Complex social universes" imply nothing but *social* universes. It
> doesn't matter to a social universe whether you can shit and pee or have
> all sorts of wonderful realistic features. It's about social interaction,
> and MU*s have that, despite lack of inflation etc... please start another
> thread that's called "realism in MU*s", or something... it doesn't have
> anything to do with social environments :-)
I know I'm swimming upstream here, but I really disagree. The depth and
intricacy of social interaction is _definitely_ affected by how real and
immersive the world seems to the players. You can take this to absurd
lengths by specifying precisely how much water you have to drink each
day and how much you pee each day as a result, but that's neither
necessary nor was it implied by my comments. OTOH, doing things like
creating a bit of slag everytime someone creates a sword (which must be
disposed of or it affects the quality and quantity of swords you can
produce as it accumulates), or allowing only so many gold pieces in
circulation, depending on how much gold has been mined, transported, and
minted (without being stolen on the way), or putting into place somewhat
abstracted supply-and-demand pricing will add a great deal to a mud and
enable social interactions that are difficult to predict from a
minimalist point of view. These things may seem superfluous, but they
are not; complex social environments necessarily emerge from a disparate
set of elements, and almost always do so in surprising ways.
(A little knowledge of psychology, sociology, and anthropology is as
necessary to good mud design as is knowledge of software engineering,
IMO.)
Michael Sellers
George Reese wrote:
> The fact that a mud does or does not have a real economic system does
> not make it any less realistic or any less valid as a model of a
> particular universe. It may even be perfectly consistent for things to
> regenerate in your universe.
The problem with this view is that from the players' view, they don't
see a certain universal model; they see a mud where the coders have
decided to implement resets in a certain way. This diminishes the
immersiveness of the game, and thus the social context, by damaging any
suspension of disbelief the players had. I've yet to see a mud that
justifies its resets with some sort of backstory -- in fact I'll go out
on a limb and say, for example, that Meridian is the only MUD I've seen
that justifies how characters come back from the dead in its backstory
(it's also the only one I know with an actual Underworld where you go
when you die, even if it wasn't implemented as designed (grumble grumble
grumble) ).
I don't mean for this to take off into a "realism in MUDs" thread, but
neither do I think we can say that MUDs today have 'perfected' (George's
word) the modeling of complex social universes. Truly, we've barely
begun. Economies and ecologies (not to mention player-governments),
implemented correctly, will continue to refine our knowledge of what it
means to model such universes for years to come.
Adam Wiggins
>> I disagree. :) Current MUDs are good to excellent models of shallow
>> universes: there is little in the way of homeostatic regulation of
>> things such as ecologies, economies, or even single creatures. I > would
>> agree that MUDs currently provide a compelling imaginative and social
>> experience, and many provide the opportunity for an informal and
>> ongoing team to add to the universe.
>
>were actually gathered and manufactured would be awesome, I have to
>question its usefulness. Coding a self-balancing economy is DECIDEDLY
>non-trivial.
First - usefulness? This is a mud for crying out loud. It's not useful
in any way, shape or form, other than possibly weeding out the weak-willed
from college early on.
Second - yes, it is difficult. So?
>I see two main problems with the "more realism, more realism" cry.
>1). This is a fantasy. I don't want my character to get tired, so that I
>have to sit there and waste real-life time as he rests. I want to spend
>all of my time tromping around and interacting with monsters and other
>players.
Why do people believe that realism==drudgery? My desire for more realism
in muds is to get *rid* of drugery. First of all, there's simply the
little annoyances - things like your barbarian ditching his battle-axe
(2d5) in favor of a delicate mithril stiletto (3d8+2+2). This is neither
fun nor realistic, and incredibly confusing to newbie mudders. Like
a dumbass I walked around wielding a battle-axe on my first char for several
days until someone explained that the weapons use damage dice which is
nowhere near consistent and that items which seem more valuable and/or
magical probably hit harder, regardless of what they actually are.
How about collapsing, out of 'moves', one step away from where you need
to be? You're gonna tell me I just can't possibly drag myself another
step?
On top of this, I think that the drudgery in today's muds is largely
in part due to the lack of realism. Ie, seeing 'you massacre so and so'
a thousand times a day is pretty boring. Where as a realistic combat
system with dynamic parries, ripostes, thrusts, charges, lunges, dodges,
shieldblocks, tackles, headbutts, splattering blood, severed limbs, screams
of pain, etc is a tad more engaging. Also, I'm tired of having to kill
things in order to have my peaceful druid or cleric be able to learn more
spells, or having to kill tons of things so that my wimpy thief will be
able to steal better. (To be honest I can't even bring myself to play
non skill-based muds anymore.)
>2). It doesn't add anything to the game.
This is a mighty broad, and dangerous, statement. First of all, what
you consider 'anything' may not necessarily be the same as what someone
else does. Secondly, you don't even seem to quite understand what the
phrase 'realism' entails.
>The complex statistics involved
>in combat might make the coders and imps salivate, but as a player, I
>don't really care.
Yes! Yes! You're right! Thanks for proving my point. You don't care -
you just want the system to work in a logical, consistant, and most importantly
FUN manner. Watching 'a slender elf' tripple massacre me (when players
get at most two attacks) and have six times my hitpoints does not qualify
in any of these categories, but that's what you get on most hack and slash
muds these days. The problem are priorities. The solution is to broaden
the scope of what we think of as a mud, and the easiest way to do that
is to draw on elements from 'real' life.
>I think having complex systems, or more accurately,
>exposing them to the user, detracts from the realism.
Very correct, and I think this is where DartMUD fell down a little bit.
I don't want to tell what percentage of the time I'm going to target their
left forearm, but I *do* like the idea that I can specifically target their
hand if I wish to teach them a lesson by just chopping it off but not killing
them, or target their neck if I desire a quick kill, or target their abdomen
if I see it's unprotected. But I want this to be easy to do, and not too
technical, since that just detracts from the suspension of disbelief as well
as the role-playing aspect.
>While a self-balancing economy would probably require months of tweaking
>and fine-tuning to get it right, in the end, the players don't actually
>see much.
That's where you're wrong. Players see *all*. Players are incredibly
ingenious, numerous, and have way too much time on their hands.
They _will_ find every nuance of any mud worth its beans sooner or later.
The idea is that when they find said nuance, they will go, 'Cool!' as
oposed to 'oh...hmmm, that's lame' - which I hear (and say) far too much.
>Spend your time writing new areas, and adding cool and interesting
>objects and mobs. Your players will appreciate it more.
Great. Just what this world needs, another ruined temple. Maybe if
we kill the undead high priestess about 27 times the Priestess' Black Robes
of Unholy Power...it glows softly...it hums powerfully...it vibrates madly..
will load.
More seriously, I'm interested in recapturing the sort of 'magic' that I
felt when I first started playing muds. Now, at the time, I had played
plenty of RPGs and even written a small shareware RPG of my own, so I wasn't
exactly ignorant of the subject, but I remember feeling quite a bit of
awe as I saw high level players portalling around, casting strange spells,
pulling mysterious objects out of their bags, and talking about far-away
places. After two weeks my char hit maxlevel and I started finding out
more about how things worked...and realised it was all mostly smoke and
mirrors. Ever since then I have played many, many muds, ever looking for
one that had more substance, mystery, and a true sense of epicness to it.
I've played a lot of fun muds but none have approached this (somewhat lofty,
I admit) ideal. But I find the discussion of 'realistic' muds here
and elsewhere that seems to be ushering in a new era of more complex,
consistant, and (gasp, no) realistic muds very encouraging. Granted there
are alway those that say, "It'll never work! Just go back to doing things
the way we have been. The way we doing things now is obviously ideal, you
can't improve upon it." Those are the same sorts of people that claimed
modems would never be able to go faster than 300 baud, or even that
people would ever own their own 'personal' computers. Open your mind...
George Reese
Ned Lovely wrote:
> I see two main problems with the "more realism, more realism" cry.
>
> 1). This is a fantasy. I don't want my character to get tired, so that I
> have to sit there and waste real-life time as he rests. I want to spend
> all of my time tromping around and interacting with monsters and other
> players.
>
> in combat might make the coders and imps salivate, but as a player, I
> exposing them to the user, detracts from the realism.
While I agree that realism is not a good goal in itself, I disagree with
your reasons. Realism is actually in the eye of the beholder and
relative. The question is really: To what level of detail does a mud
wish to model the fantasy world it is modeling?
The fact that a mud does or does not have a real economic system does
not make it any less realistic or any less valid as a model of a
particular universe. It may even be perfectly consistent for things to
regenerate in your universe. The question is what does it add to your
game. In some cases, the answer is a lot. In others, it is nothing.
Again, it comes down to the world you are trying to model and the
overall detail of the other things in your model.
> While a self-balancing economy would probably require months of tweaking
> and fine-tuning to get it right, in the end, the players don't actually
> see much.
I agree.
> Spend your time writing new areas, and adding cool and interesting
> objects and mobs. Your players will appreciate it more.
I agree.
Matt Chatterley
On Mon, 21 Apr 1997, George Reese wrote:
> Date: Mon, 21 Apr 1997 18:46:25 -0500
> From: George Reese <bo...@imaginary.com>
> Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
> Subject: Re: The State of Muds
>
> While I agree that realism is not a good goal in itself, I disagree with
> your reasons. Realism is actually in the eye of the beholder and
> relative. The question is really: To what level of detail does a mud
> wish to model the fantasy world it is modeling?
Exactly! You've hit the nail right on the head, so to speak. This is why
rather than saying that I'm "trying to maintain realism" with my game, I
would phrase it "attempting to maintain internal consistancy". Ie: If X is
true at Y, it should also be true at Z (given normal conditions). A gold
coin will always weigh 0.2kg, and 5 gold coins worth of gold in a lump
will weigh 1kg.
> The fact that a mud does or does not have a real economic system does
> not make it any less realistic or any less valid as a model of a
> particular universe. It may even be perfectly consistent for things to
> regenerate in your universe. The question is what does it add to your
> game. In some cases, the answer is a lot. In others, it is nothing.
> Again, it comes down to the world you are trying to model and the
> overall detail of the other things in your model.
Right. It depends what you are actually trying to do, in what amount of d
etail you draw from the real world (tm). In many cases any attempts at
realism are spilt by silly standards, and cock-ups, such as daggers which
weigh '1000', while swords exist that weigh '200'. :)
> > While a self-balancing economy would probably require months of tweaking
> > and fine-tuning to get it right, in the end, the players don't actually
> > see much.
>
> I agree.
Definitely true.
> > Spend your time writing new areas, and adding cool and interesting
> > objects and mobs. Your players will appreciate it more.
>
> I agree.
Much more than something like a realistic economy, yes.
Regards,
-Matt Chatterley
http://user.itl.net/~neddy/index.html
"Fishing is complete and utter madness." -Spike Milligan
George Reese
Michael Sellers wrote:
>
> George Reese wrote:
> > The fact that a mud does or does not have a real economic system does
> > not make it any less realistic or any less valid as a model of a
> > particular universe. It may even be perfectly consistent for things to
> > regenerate in your universe.
>
> see a certain universal model; they see a mud where the coders have
> decided to implement resets in a certain way.
It depends on how it is integrated into the game. It also depends on
how much of an issue it is with respect to the overall game experience.
While I would say that reset schemes overall are the biggest kludge
factor on the model, they are not necessarily a serious one.
Furthermore, you make the wrong assumption no one has done anything
about this.
> This diminishes the
> immersiveness of the game, and thus the social context, by damaging any
> suspension of disbelief the players had. I've yet to see a mud that
> justifies its resets with some sort of backstory -- in fact I'll go out
> on a limb and say, for example, that Meridian is the only MUD I've seen
> that justifies how characters come back from the dead in its backstory
> (it's also the only one I know with an actual Underworld where you go
> when you die, even if it wasn't implemented as designed (grumble grumble
> grumble) ).
Then you are completely wrong. Nightmare has had a very rich Underworld
and retruning from the dead backstory for 2 years.
> I don't mean for this to take off into a "realism in MUDs" thread, but
> neither do I think we can say that MUDs today have 'perfected' (George's
> word) the modeling of complex social universes. Truly, we've barely
> begun. Economies and ecologies (not to mention player-governments),
> implemented correctly, will continue to refine our knowledge of what it
> means to model such universes for years to come.
Your understanding of what others have done, first of all, seems
limited. I am not suggesting mine is not. I think everyone in this
group's understanding of what others have done is limited by the sheer
number and type of muds out there. This is why I HATE posts that say
'Come visit BozoMud, where we are the first to XXX.' Chances are, you
were nowhere near the first.
Furthermore, just because people have chosen not to model a certain
aspect does not mean they are not capable of doing it. I could
implement a more robust economic system into Nightmare relatively easily
if I wanted to, I just do not think it is worth it with respect to other
things I could do.
The point about being able to model something means you could do XXX if
you wanted to without undue problem. It does not mean you have to do
XXX in order for your system to be a valid model. Which things you
actually choose to model are up to your point of view.
Joost de Heer
In <335C45...@ricochet.net.nospam> Michael Sellers <msel...@ricochet.net.nospam> writes:
:(it's also the only one I know with an actual Underworld where you go
:when you die, even if it wasn't implemented as designed (grumble grumble
:grumble) ).
Synergy has the 'plains of death' where you'll end up if you die.
Getting out of there is a small quest ;-)
[For the suicidal maniacs wanting to check out our death 'scene' :
synergy.sigmasoft.com 2000]
Joost/Pippin
--
Think about all the good in your life - It's only temporary
Think about all the positive sides in life - They never last forever
So drink to forget and drown all your sorrow SENTENCED
Bury your dreams and choose Catharsis NEPENTHE
Erik Lavander
Adam Wiggins wrote:
[snip]
> Also, I'm tired of having to kill
> things in order to have my peaceful druid or cleric be able to learn more
> spells, or having to kill tons of things so that my wimpy thief will be
> able to steal better. (To be honest I can't even bring myself to play
> non skill-based muds anymore.)
It's almost incredible how many muds there are with only one profession:
Monster Killer. :)
EriK
Lisa
In article <335C43...@ricochet.net.nospam>,
msel...@ricochet.net.nospam wrote:
> Lisa wrote:
> > It's all ending up in a discussion about realism in MU*s, which was not
> > the original issue, as far as I understand it.
> > "Complex social universes" imply nothing but *social* universes. It
> > doesn't matter to a social universe whether you can shit and pee or have
> > all sorts of wonderful realistic features. It's about social interaction,
> > and MU*s have that, despite lack of inflation etc... please start another
> > thread that's called "realism in MU*s", or something... it doesn't have
> > anything to do with social environments :-)
>
> I know I'm swimming upstream here, but I really disagree. The depth and
> intricacy of social interaction is _definitely_ affected by how real and
> immersive the world seems to the players.
Hmm. Yeah, I think you're right. But, the important thing is that it's
realistic in a social sense, right? That's why I don't think it matters
if you have inflation or toilet visits etc...
One definition of virtual reality was made by Jonathan Steuer at Stanford,
he defines it by vividness and interaction. I think that's what gives
users a sense of social presense, and a sense of realism. In other words,
that's what makes us involved with real feelings in a virtual community,
etc. I think that depends on *social* realism, such as... interaction: I
say something, other users immediately reads it. I emote something, other
users immediately sees it. I interact and affect the other users. That
gives a social environment... Not whether the money is worth half as much
today as last month. (on the vividness aspect, muds suck, but the high
interaction makes up for it :P)
>OTOH, doing things like
> creating a bit of slag everytime someone creates a sword (which must be
> disposed of or it affects the quality and quantity of swords you can
> produce as it accumulates), or allowing only so many gold pieces in
> circulation, depending on how much gold has been mined, transported, and
> minted (without being stolen on the way), or putting into place somewhat
> abstracted supply-and-demand pricing will add a great deal to a mud and
> enable social interactions that are difficult to predict from a
> minimalist point of view. These things may seem superfluous, but they
> are not; complex social environments necessarily emerge from a disparate
> set of elements, and almost always do so in surprising ways.
Nod, it will change the behaviour of the users, but it won't make it more
or less of a social environment. MU*s have the qualities needed to make
social environments, virtual communities, and it doesn't matter if you
make it intriguing and realistic in the senses you suggest, it might be a
funnier game, but it won't make the users feel a higher sense of social
presense, imo.
/Lisa
mor...@niuhep.physics.niu.edu
Michael Sellers <msel...@ricochet.net.nospam> writes:
>Lisa wrote:
>> msel...@ricochet.net.nospam wrote:
>> > George Reese wrote:
>> > > As we approach the middle of 1997, muds have largely perfected
>> > > a specific realm: the realm of modeling complex social universes.
I don't know if it's true, but I just wanted to remind folx what George is
actually saying here.
>> > Current MUDs are good to excellent models of shallow
>> > universes: there is little in the way of homeostatic regulation of
>> > things such as ecologies, economies, or even single creatures.
little but not none. And yes I would like to see more.
>> > I would
>> > agree that MUDs currently provide a compelling imaginative and social
>> > experience, and many provide the opportunity for an informal and ongoing
>> > team to add to the universe.
>> It's all ending up in a discussion about realism in MU*s, which was not
>> the original issue, as far as I understand it.
>> It doesn't matter to a social universe whether you can shit and pee or have
>> all sorts of wonderful realistic features. It's about social interaction,
>> and MU*s have that,
>I know I'm swimming upstream here, but I really disagree. The depth and
>intricacy of social interaction is _definitely_ affected by how real and
>immersive the world seems to the players.
>You can take this to absurd lengths by specifying precisely how much
>water you have to drink each day
<Heh> just wait until you try to cross my desert without a water bag :)
>and how much you pee each day as a result, but that's neither
>necessary nor was it implied by my comments. OTOH, doing things like
>creating a bit of slag everytime someone creates a sword (which must be
>[various and sundry other realistic details]
>will add a great deal to a
>mud and enable social interactions that are difficult to predict from a
>minimalist point of view. These things may seem superfluous, but they
>are not; complex social environments necessarily emerge from a disparate
>set of elements, and almost always do so in surprising ways.
May I quote you?
>I know I'm swimming upstream here
That should tell you something. Some people do indeed find these things
superfluous. They might rather have clans and wierd weapons and talking
garbage cans ... it is a matter of taste and interest.
Other people like you need/want to suspend disbelief and fantasize that
they are in a fantansy realm.
BTW I am in your camp
specify the e-mail address below, my reply-to: has anti-spam added to it
Mor...@physics.niu.edu
Real Men change diapers
Michael Sellers
Lisa wrote:
> >OTOH, doing things like
> > creating a bit of slag everytime someone creates a sword (which must be
> > produce as it accumulates), or allowing only so many gold pieces in
> > circulation, depending on how much gold has been mined, transported, and
> > minted (without being stolen on the way), or putting into place somewhat
> > enable social interactions that are difficult to predict from a
> > minimalist point of view. These things may seem superfluous, but they
> > are not; complex social environments necessarily emerge from a disparate
> > set of elements, and almost always do so in surprising ways.
>
> or less of a social environment. MU*s have the qualities needed to make
> social environments, virtual communities, and it doesn't matter if you
> make it intriguing and realistic in the senses you suggest, it might be a
> funnier game, but it won't make the users feel a higher sense of social
> presense, imo.
If this were true, chat rooms would be as compelling as MUDs, but they
aren't. When we started Meridian, one of our first hypotheses (having
seen things like Worlds Chat and wondering why they were so _boring_) is
that making the environment seem more _real_ and more _dangerous_ would
catalyze better and deeper social interaction. And, we were right -- it
works. There's a sort of "circle the wagons" phenomenon that happens
when people are in an environment that they perceive to be dangerous,
but not chaotically dangerous. That is, if the environment is just
randomly odd or dangerous (including being perceived as too shallow), it
quickly becomes frustrating and all but the most trivial social
interaction is dampened. When the environment is perceived to have some
rhyme and reason, some rules or laws by which it operates ("orcs tend to
live in the hills" as one simple example), this creates sufficient
reason for people to begin talking, planning, working, recuperating,
reliving, and planning again in larger and larger social units. This in
turn enables all sorts of complex social interactions, which is the soul
of a complex social environment. In other words, you can think of a
deeply textured physical environment, where people have to make
interesting decisions about what they will do to stay alive and get
ahead, as the foundation for the complex social environment that
eventually is what keeps them engaged in the virtual space over time.
Again, I know many mud-reductionists disagree with this; but like any
emergent phenomena, creating a satisfying social environment is not
amenable to a reductionist analysis.
Michael Sellers
Adam Wiggins wrote:
> >> I disagree. :) Current MUDs are good to excellent models of shallow
> >> universes: there is little in the way of homeostatic regulation of
> >> things such as ecologies, economies, or even single creatures. I > would
> >> agree that MUDs currently provide a compelling imaginative and social
> >> experience, and many provide the opportunity for an informal and
> >> ongoing team to add to the universe.
> >
> > While I think having a "real" mud economy, where raw materials
> >were actually gathered and manufactured would be awesome, I have to
> >question its usefulness. Coding a self-balancing economy is DECIDEDLY
> >non-trivial.
>
> First - usefulness? This is a mud for crying out loud. It's not useful
> in any way, shape or form, other than possibly weeding out the weak-willed
> from college early on.
That depends on who you want it to be useful for. If you're looking at
the fairly closed (nearly incestuous in some cases) current mudding
community, it may not be that useful. However, if you want to move
beyond this community to attract a larger audience (and I realize this
is anathema to many mud implementors), it becomes incredibly useful.
One reason that more people are not engaged by current muds is because
they see the variety of activities as fairly limited. Nearly everything
involves killing something. Despite the success of games like Doom,
most of the game-playing public is just not motivated by that (something
like 80+ of the top 100 games -- not just computer games -- sold last
year did not involve killing in any way, according to Games magazine).
By including in your game a broad range of activities that will engage
people with varying interests, you increase the appeal of your game
while also decreasing the amount of the game that's "canned." Again,
this is mainly useful if you're interested in attracting a wider
audience than you have now.
> Second - yes, it is difficult. So?
Agreed. :)
> ... Also, I'm tired of having to kill
> things in order to have my peaceful druid or cleric be able to learn more
> spells, or having to kill tons of things so that my wimpy thief will be
> able to steal better.
See? :) If you had an economy with shops with stock in them, your thief
could practice breaking into these shops, stealing the stock, trying to
fence it, and would have to be afraid of the consequences should he be
caught in the act or with the stolen goods. This sort of scenario
requires a lot of the environmental things many mudders would say are
not useful. Once again, I'll point out that a lot of the ecological
foundational material becomes useful in ways you don't see at first, and
some in ways you'd never imagine in advance.
>...
> >While a self-balancing economy would probably require months of tweaking
> >and fine-tuning to get it right, in the end, the players don't actually
> >see much.
>
> That's where you're wrong. Players see *all*. Players are incredibly
> ingenious, numerous, and have way too much time on their hands.
> They _will_ find every nuance of any mud worth its beans sooner or later.
> The idea is that when they find said nuance, they will go, 'Cool!' as
> oposed to 'oh...hmmm, that's lame' - which I hear (and say) far too much.
Yes! Precisely! That's it! You've got thousands (hopefully) of very
bright minds looking at _everything_ you've done for months on end.
With Meridian, people deduced some of our algorithms and posted them on
the web, in some cases startlingly fast. Players see *all*. Exactly.
And if they see the "walls of the holodeck" they are much less satisfied
than if they have the *illusion* that they can see forever.
> More seriously, I'm interested in recapturing the sort of 'magic' that I
> felt when I first started playing muds. Now, at the time, I had played
> plenty of RPGs and even written a small shareware RPG of my own, so I wasn't
> exactly ignorant of the subject, but I remember feeling quite a bit of
> awe as I saw high level players portalling around, casting strange spells,
> pulling mysterious objects out of their bags, and talking about far-away
> places. After two weeks my char hit maxlevel and I started finding out
> more about how things worked...and realised it was all mostly smoke and
> mirrors.
Yes! Thanks. That's exactly what I'm trying to create as well.
Michael Sellers
Brian James Green wrote:
> note that I use the abbreviation "SOD" for "suspension of disbelief"
> >> > It's all ending up in a discussion about realism in MU*s, which was not
> >> > the original issue, as far as I understand it.
> >> intricacy of social interaction is _definitely_ affected by how real and
> >> immersive the world seems to the players.
>
> "real" world isn't necessarily more immersive than one not based on the
> real world. I think what people are really looking for is *consistency*
> in the game world.
> ...
> In all, I think that it is not necessary to perfectly model the "real
> world" in your game. ... What you do need is consistency.
I think we agree. I was NOT arguing for some absolute adherance to the
real world, nor for an absurd amount of detail that just gets in the way
and becomes tedious. However, consistency implies more than just
obeying the rules of your world; it also involves being consistent with
what the players probably expect, which means having a certain amount of
depth and detail in your world. Just as people expect things to fall
down and not up, they expect for there to be friction and waste in
everyday processes; we seem to have an inherent sense of balance and
homeostasis (what happens if I get off the see-saw while you are high up
in the air?). No, I don't mean you should model PCs' bladders bursting
if they don't pee often enough, but when it can provide interesting
decisions (e.g., what to do with the slag from my swordmaking?), this
can add depth and additional consistency to the world.
Brian James Green
My news server's been screwy lately, so I'm getting posts WAY out of
order. Pardon my quoting, attributions, etc.
Also, note that I use the abbreviation "SOD" for "suspension of disbelief"
In <elisabet.bjerre-...@d175.mkv.mh.se> elisabe...@mkv.mh.se (Lisa) writes:
>In article <335C43...@ricochet.net.nospam>,
>msel...@ricochet.net.nospam wrote:
>> Lisa wrote:
>> > It's all ending up in a discussion about realism in MU*s, which was not
>> > the original issue, as far as I understand it.
>> > "Complex social universes" imply nothing but *social* universes. It
>> > doesn't matter to a social universe whether you can shit and pee or have
>> > all sorts of wonderful realistic features. It's about social interaction,
>> > and MU*s have that, despite lack of inflation etc... please start another
>> > thread that's called "realism in MU*s", or something... it doesn't have
>> > anything to do with social environments :-)
>>
>> I know I'm swimming upstream here, but I really disagree. The depth and
>> intricacy of social interaction is _definitely_ affected by how real and
>> immersive the world seems to the players.
I personally have to disagree with Mike here. A world modeled on the
"real" world isn't necessarily more immersive than one not based on the
real world. I think what people are really looking for is *consistency*
in the game world. Often, modeling the game off of the "real world" is
the most known way of getting this consistency.
For example, if I were a swordsmith, and I wanted to forge a sword, I
would want my results to be pretty consistent to the way the universe is
modeled. If I'm supposed to get better at swordforging as my skills
increase, I will be rather disappointed if I start producing lower
quality swords constantly as my forging skill increases, without other
explainable factors at work.
I have played several traditional paper RPGs where the economy of the
setting was nothing AT ALL like the "real world". Did this hurt my SOD,
or hinder my portrayal of my character? Not in the slightest. What
does hurt is when I expect the world to work in one way, but works to
the contrary without an apparent reason.
So, say we throw "real world" physics out the window and say that due to
some wierd reason (magic, perhaps), gravity works in reverse for
non-living items. So, if I "drop" an item on the MUD, it floats into
the atmosphere never to be seen again. If I want to leave something
somewhere, I have to secure it. Since the player is probably a living
thing, the reversed gravity won't affect him or her. Would a world like
this harm your SOD? I don't see why it should. Your charcter would
just have to get used to the new system and learn how to use it to his
or her advantage. However, if the "rules" were broken (like, the MUD
still counted encumberance for equipment) your SOD would be irrevocably
hurt unless some good explanation were offered (contact with a living
being causes non-living items to observe "living" gravity).
In all, I think that it is not necessary to perfectly model the "real
world" in your game. Most MUDs use Magic, which isn't usually a flashy
real world occurence as it is portrayed in MUDs. (BTW, yes, I know
about Wiccans, Neo-Pagans, etc. No, I haven't seen them cast a
fireball, but then again, none of them needed to kill a mid-level
computer geek to gain next level. ;) What you do need is consistency.
If your magic fire starts a fire in one forest, then casting the same
magic should start a fire in a different forest or at least offere a
plausable explanation.
All IMHO, of course. YMMV.
"And I now wait / to shake the hand of fate...." -"Defender", Manowar
Brian Green, pch...@iastate.edu aka Psychochild
|\ _,,,---,,_ *=* Morpheus, my kitten, says "Hi!" *=*
ZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ "If you two are so evil, then why don't
|,4- ) )-,_..;\ ( `'-' you just...EAT THIS KITTEN!"
'---''(_/--' `-'\_) - "The Tick", Saturday morning cartoon.
Check out: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~pchild to find out about me!
Nathan F. Yospe
msel...@ricochet.net.nospam wrote:
:The problem with this view is that from the players' view, they don't
:see a certain universal model; they see a mud where the coders have
:decided to implement resets in a certain way. This diminishes the
:immersiveness of the game, and thus the social context, by damaging any
:suspension of disbelief the players had. I've yet to see a mud that
:justifies its resets with some sort of backstory -- in fact I'll go out
:on a limb and say, for example, that Meridian is the only MUD I've seen
:that justifies how characters come back from the dead in its backstory
:(it's also the only one I know with an actual Underworld where you go
:when you die, even if it wasn't implemented as designed (grumble grumble
:grumble) ).
I've seen others... Discworld, at least in '94, had a spirit system that
allowed spirits to reclaim their bodies (8) 7a times, and there have been
others. My own Singularity and Singularity 2 used a cloning system, with
an explanation of how the mind transfer works and how the clone is force
grown... I have even, in Sing 2, implemented gradual genetic decay and
prepayed non automatic cloning. I have seen a few other muds with the
concept of an underworld. (Shame I didn't get GURU out before now... still
a bit of work to do on that, but there was a complex underworld system in
that original design that allowed pcs to be summoned from the underworld
and trapped in bottles, or bound to items.)
:I don't mean for this to take off into a "realism in MUDs" thread, but
:neither do I think we can say that MUDs today have 'perfected' (George's
:word) the modeling of complex social universes. Truly, we've barely
:begun. Economies and ecologies (not to mention player-governments),
:implemented correctly, will continue to refine our knowledge of what it
:means to model such universes for years to come.
Certainly, I would agree with that. There are many things that require a
greater degree of exploration and development. One of the primary goals
of Physmud++, my current project, is a text mud that reads like a novel,
without any visible mechanics. The method to accomplishing this: a 3D
universe, fully modeled, with a complex set of physical laws coherently
modeled throughout. Ecologies are not yet a part of this, though they
will be incorporated most completely into the GURU project. Economies are
not coded, but it is my hope that, by the very method of the world design,
economies will develop on their own.
--
Nathan F. Yospe | There is nothing wrong with being a sociopath. Its
yo...@hawaii.edu | getting caught thats a problem. Be a mad scientist
UH Manoa Physics | Write poetry. Be an artist. Plot world domination.
Biomedical Phys. | Panthers make great pets. Muhahahahahahahahahaha!!
Jamie Norrish
pch...@iastate.edu (Brian James Green) writes:
> Perhaps the MUD community should start doing what some members of
> the individual computer game programmers have done: Start lists of
> people that are good at something and can lend their abilities to a
> project. So, we could hook up the good designers with the amazing
> coders and come up with a truly excellent production, instead of the
> talented designer putting together a hack of a MUD with an
> interesting story and getting a story that is wasted on a bunch of
> broken mechanics.
I think this is an excellent idea. I have been hankering (quietly) for
years to work with some like-minded MUD developers with necessary
skills I don't have to work on MUD projects. Something like this might
prove very useful, if managed properly.
FWIW, I'm interested in detailed, simulationist, self-consistent
settings which have an emphasis on role-playing, where the characters
have lives which do not revolve around killing things. I write, and
enjoy systems design (not coding).
Jamie
Michael Tillmann
In article <335CED...@ricochet.net.nospam>, msel...@ricochet.net.nospam
says...
game, with simplistic interaction. That doesn't mean you have to institute a
command for every conceivable action. What it does mean is that each game
has to decide the right balance for them. Some people might be satisfied
with the bare minimumus, others might want complex economic systems, etc..
There is no right or wrong really on this matter, it's a matter of personal
taste and players will gravitate to games that suit them.
I think it's good to let the players take a part in the development of
complex systems inside of a game themselves though, not everything has to be
instituted from the top down. For example, set up an IC money system.. then
let the players take that and make something out of it themselves. They
might end up starting commercial enterprises, they might start an exchange,
there could be fluctuating prices on various commodities, etc.. Some people
might consider this unneeded detail, others might find it adds a whole lot
to the gaming experience, giving them a basis to roleplay off of.
Scott Anderson
Back in '89-'90, GodNet MOO actually went to the extent of having Thanatos
incarnated as an NPC. He would wander the mud, chatting with players until
his beeper went off, at which point he would go harvest the soul in
person. The player's soul then went to Purgatory where it waited in
interminable lines and was interviewed for proper placement in the 'next
life'. We had a Hell as well, with Charon the ferry man, etc.
Never got around to coding Heaven though... People fancied it as being too
boring, although Hell got a lot of traffic... ;)
-baal
In article
<yospe-22049...@usrns39.dialup.hawaii.edu>,
Nathan F. Yospe <yo...@hawaii.remove.this.edu> wrote:
Carlos Myers
George Reese <bo...@imaginary.com> wrote in article
<335A85B8...@imaginary.com>...
> Narien wrote:
> >
> > I stand amazed. Old Flaming George can write a post without
> > reverting back to a Neanderthal. If only he would talk like an
> > intelligant being more often and refrain from his childish ego-flames.
> >
> > Narien (dben...@mc.net)
>
> I simply cannot make a post in this newsgroup without some jerk taking a
> shot at me. This is just way too comedic.
Ignore them. Firing shots right back at them feeds their own egos.
Carlos Myers
--
Let's dance tonight to a virtual song
Press this key and you can play along
Rush - Virtuality
Farix's Den - http://www.citynet.net/personal/farix/
Brian James Green
In <335A90DA...@imaginary.com> George Reese <bo...@imaginary.com> writes:
>Brian James Green wrote:
>> George Reese <bo...@imaginary.com> writes:
>> >The second problem is the problem of ubiquity. Everyone is a king and
>> >no one is a peasant in the mud world. In other words, the ratio of
>> >players/muds is so low, that true creative talent, while there in
>> >abundance, is diluted across too many muds. This leads to an appearant
>> >lack of talent in the mud community and a distasteful homogeneity across
>> >the mud world.
>>
>> article (see also the "stock muds, the my-way highway" thread). Too
>> many people want to do a MUD in their personal image. So, now we have
>> creative but non-technical people setting up stock-muds with interesting
>> areas but nothing truly original in terms of mechanics, technical but
>> uncreative (or, not as creative as other people) building the perfect
>> set of mechanics to complement a rather lackluster world, and
>> power-trippers that have no creativity or coding ability that just want
>> to have a MUD so they can boss people around and hit on MUD women.
>>
>> I think that often it's not an issue of "too many cooks spoil the stew",
>> but one of "I'm the only decent cook, so I'm going to make things my
>> way!" Many MUDs I've played or worked on have come to a abysmal low due
>> to political infighting and the swinging of giant...um...egos.
>Yes, I think you have stated this problem very well.
>> Perhaps the MUD community should start doing what some members of the
>> individual computer game programmers have done: Start lists of people
>> that are good at something and can lend their abilities to a project.
>> So, we could hook up the good designers with the amazing coders and come
>> up with a truly excellent production, instead of the talented designer
>> putting together a hack of a MUD with an interesting story and getting a
>> story that is wasted on a bunch of broken mechanics.
>That would be a good idea... I don't think people will go for it though
>:)
>I agree that a good step would be to get the more talented people in the
>community working together on a single project.
What about it, people? Is anyone willing to pull together to create a
MUD masterpiece? Here's what I'm suggesting:
We pull people with some knowledge and ability (and time to donate) into
one MUD project. We keep good documentation of the project and the
development for future projects. This might help people in future
designs to avoid common problems, and might even produce an interesting
new lib and MUD to boot! :)
Here's the main areas I see need for: (just for note, I'm using the LP
paradigm for MUD structure, but that doesn't mean we have to limit
ourselves to just an LP).
Designers and Documenters: They will come up with the theme, setting,
story, descriptions, and all other non-code related parts of the MUD.
They will also keep documents of the progress of the MUD development and
coding for future reference. Upon opening, the designers will design
new additions to the MUD and guidelines for area coding.
Coders: They will be responsible for the specific coding of the MUD,
implementing the designs of the designers, handling specific code
problems, and making the game work from a mechanical point of view.
Upon opening, the coders will continue to implement the designer's
designs and fix bugs as they are found.
Administration: They will handle the day-to-day running of the project
once it is running. They will handle player disputes, help the
designers to implement player run systems within the MUD and point out
potential problems with either design or code.
I suggest that each group have one person to definitely lead the
efforts, with two or three assistants to handle the slack. Any number
of people can contribute, but it is ultimatly the decision of the group
leader as to what is actually implemented or done with the MUD. All
leaders and assistant should probably have some relavant experience
and be willing to contribute to the effort.
The big problem to this is that everyone will have to leave their egos
at the door. No glory-hogging, no "my way or no way" arguments. Be
willing to contribute and be willing to compromise and be willing to
play nice with others. :)
Any volunteers? I volunteer to be Designer/Documenter leader,
Administration assistant, and contribute to coding. I am currently
working on my own MUD with some friends (Demonscape), and have some
examples of my work in designing and documenting. (See my WWW pages at:
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~pchild/dscape/designdoc.html
for my design and documentation of the Demonscape project.)
I'll also coordinate efforts of grouping everyone together in the
project if there is any interest.
>> >Marketing
>I really do not have a good answer for this problem. It is something
>IMHO worth some serious discussion.
This is another issue that will take some group cooperation. Is anyone
really interested in contributing ideas as to how to reach other people
that might be interested in MUDding? I have something in the works and
will share it with everyone if/when it all works out. :)
Adam Wiggins
>The problem with this view is that from the players' view, they don't
>see a certain universal model; they see a mud where the coders have
>decided to implement resets in a certain way. This diminishes the
>immersiveness of the game, and thus the social context, by damaging any
>suspension of disbelief the players had. I've yet to see a mud that
100% agreed.
>justifies its resets with some sort of backstory -- in fact I'll go out
>on a limb and say, for example, that Meridian is the only MUD I've seen
>that justifies how characters come back from the dead in its backstory
>(it's also the only one I know with an actual Underworld where you go
>when you die, even if it wasn't implemented as designed (grumble grumble
>grumble) ).
Hmmm, that would be a limb. I've seen dozens of explainations for this.
Usually it involves something about your soul floating around for a while,
something with re-uniting with your corpse, and so on. In some cases your
soul has to be stored in a soul amulet and manually restored to your body,
in other cases you just petition some god for restoration, etc etc.
My personal favorite is just that you don't come back from death at all,
but this isn't too popular these days.
>I don't mean for this to take off into a "realism in MUDs" thread, but
>neither do I think we can say that MUDs today have 'perfected' (George's
>word) the modeling of complex social universes. Truly, we've barely
Hell no. I'd say we've scratched the surface of what can be done...
now that we have the processing power/RAM/whatever necessary to do soemthing
more complex, it's time to get to work.
>begun. Economies and ecologies (not to mention player-governments),
>implemented correctly, will continue to refine our knowledge of what it
>means to model such universes for years to come.
Uh huh. I remember the interactive universes I dreamed up the first time
I played Tradewars on a C64 BBS with my 300 baud modem. Today's muds are
damn cool, but don't come near what I thought of then.
Adam Wiggins
>> As we approach the middle of 1997, muds have largely perfected a
>> specific realm: the realm of modeling complex social universes.
>
>inflation.
Although I disagree with George's statement, above, for a lot of reasons,
this 'nitpick' is not one of them. Muds do indeed have inflation, though
it's pretty gradual generally. While the shops don't change prices,
player interactions certainly do. I've even seen muds chop off multiple
digits from the money scale (ie, 100 coins becomes 1 coin) just to get
the numbers down into the realms of sanity. The reason for this is somewhat
aritificial (money is unlimited, so soon players have large piles of it),
but it still occurs.
>The point of a lot of them (read: Dikus) is to have a good
>time by gaining points and levels and abilities. All good fun, and
>I play Dikus more than most other types of mud. However, resources
>in the mud universe are always being consumed, and then magically
>replaced by restocking the database. Instead of prices rising, new
Agreed on this. The only thing that is limited is certain kinds of eq;
it's not like guildmasters ever run out of time to teach, mobs run out
of money, the dwarven mines run out of mithril, or whatever.
>resources are magically created - there's more money around, but
>the prices of things have to remain largely constant otherwise newbies
>will be unable to buy anything (that, or give the newbies ever larger
>amounts of money).
The thing is, shop costs are pretty irrelevant. Ie, they just disappear
after a certain amount of time - if I have 2000 coins to my name or 200,000,
paying 1 coin for bread is not a big deal any way it goes. (This is part
of the problem, of course - very little money the players makes goes towards
her 'cost of living', unlike real life.)
>Or DO things remain in statis? I've heard of people adding more levels
>once too many players reached the top. Basically, these worlds survive
>by constantly changing.
Yes, the muds change because they are hand-modified by the coders and
builders, but I'd like to see a world which was totally dynamic because of
what I, the player, does.
>> In particular, I do not think that a codebase has ANYTHING to do with
>> the creativity or uniqueness of a mud. It is what is done with that
>> codebase. And all across muds, I see some very awesome and creative
>
>Do you think that some codebases are more likely to produce
>uninteresting muds than others?
Absolutely, although a lot more goes into this than just the codebase itself.
The cycle is that players who play a certain codebase of muds (and let's face
it, few players play all major families of muds equally) decides to write
a mud, so of course they choose whatever codebase they are familiar with.
Thus, Mercs and ROMs are always twinkish, because the players are always
twinkish. LPs tend to be creative yet inconsistant, because their players
are that way. Dikus tend to be number-oriented, because...well, you get
the idea.
George Reese
I think there is a huge tendency by a lot of people to believe that if
they have not seen it in a mud, it does not exist.
This is why we end up with all these mud ads saying 'the only/first mud
to have XXX'.
Most things in terms of world modeling have been done. Of course for
any given trend, it is probably safe to say most muds don't have feature
XXX. That is because in spite of the relative homogeneity of muds,
there is still quite a bit of diversity.
Adam Wiggins wrote:
>
> >> As we approach the middle of 1997, muds have largely perfected a
> >> specific realm: the realm of modeling complex social universes.
> >
> >Nitpick: most muds don't model real worlds well because they don't have
> >inflation.
>
> Although I disagree with George's statement, above, for a lot of reasons,
> this 'nitpick' is not one of them. Muds do indeed have inflation, though
> it's pretty gradual generally. While the shops don't change prices,
> player interactions certainly do. I've even seen muds chop off multiple
> digits from the money scale (ie, 100 coins becomes 1 coin) just to get
> the numbers down into the realms of sanity. The reason for this is somewhat
> aritificial (money is unlimited, so soon players have large piles of it),
> but it still occurs.
A lot of muds DO have inflation. Michael just appears to believe that
if it does not exist on his mud that it does not exist at all.
> >The point of a lot of them (read: Dikus) is to have a good
> >time by gaining points and levels and abilities. All good fun, and
> >I play Dikus more than most other types of mud. However, resources
> >in the mud universe are always being consumed, and then magically
> >replaced by restocking the database. Instead of prices rising, new
>
> Agreed on this. The only thing that is limited is certain kinds of eq;
> it's not like guildmasters ever run out of time to teach, mobs run out
> of money, the dwarven mines run out of mithril, or whatever.
Again, this is not true of all muds.
> >resources are magically created - there's more money around, but
> >the prices of things have to remain largely constant otherwise newbies
> >will be unable to buy anything (that, or give the newbies ever larger
> >amounts of money).
>
> The thing is, shop costs are pretty irrelevant. Ie, they just disappear
> after a certain amount of time - if I have 2000 coins to my name or 200,000,
> paying 1 coin for bread is not a big deal any way it goes. (This is part
> of the problem, of course - very little money the players makes goes towards
> her 'cost of living', unlike real life.)
I don't think there is any reason it should... But again, I bet there
are muds with this feature... certainly if it were deemed important, it
would be something fairly easy to do.
> >Or DO things remain in statis? I've heard of people adding more levels
> >once too many players reached the top. Basically, these worlds survive
> >by constantly changing.
>
> Yes, the muds change because they are hand-modified by the coders and
> builders, but I'd like to see a world which was totally dynamic because of
> what I, the player, does.
Players should not and do not create.
Matt Chatterley
On Sat, 26 Apr 1997, George Reese wrote:
> Date: Sat, 26 Apr 1997 08:51:27 -0500
> From: George Reese <bo...@imaginary.com>
> Newsgroups: rec.games.mud.admin
> Subject: Re: The State of Muds
>
> I think there is a huge tendency by a lot of people to believe that if
> they have not seen it in a mud, it does not exist.
>
> This is why we end up with all these mud ads saying 'the only/first mud
> to have XXX'.
There can be no reasonable doubt about this. Personally, I would bank on
literally everything having been done in some way shape or form in a mud
out there, somewhere, some time, when writing such an advertisement. It's
obviously not impossible that you really *are* the first.. but, to give a
brief example:
I have never played a mud which allows you to smith objects at a forge.
However, I am reassured by friends that there are such muds.. I have just
never come accross them.
> Most things in terms of world modeling have been done. Of course for
> any given trend, it is probably safe to say most muds don't have feature
> XXX. That is because in spite of the relative homogeneity of muds,
> there is still quite a bit of diversity.
This is also true, and well observed. It's also why I get so ticked at mud
adverts boasting "colour" or "ansi support" (and such like) in their
"features list". It's also why I despise such lists of features, too.
> A lot of muds DO have inflation. Michael just appears to believe that
> if it does not exist on his mud that it does not exist at all.
I'll not comment on Michael (since I don't wish to start another
flame-bath), but I have certainly seen muds which have inflation. This
does somewhat take us back to above: It's IMHO perfectly reasonable to
assume that everything has been done - not necessarily in the same (or
even similar) ways, however.
> > >The point of a lot of them (read: Dikus) is to have a good
> > >time by gaining points and levels and abilities. All good fun, and
> > >I play Dikus more than most other types of mud. However, resources
> > >in the mud universe are always being consumed, and then magically
> > >replaced by restocking the database. Instead of prices rising, new
> >
> > Agreed on this. The only thing that is limited is certain kinds of eq;
> > it's not like guildmasters ever run out of time to teach, mobs run out
> > of money, the dwarven mines run out of mithril, or whatever.
>
> Again, this is not true of all muds.
Again, quite correct. I have seen muds which for example, enforce
time-limits on some teaching, and others which have alternate ways to
advance. Realistic economical simulation is often not desirable to those
running muds.. but there is no reason why it can't be done (or why it
hasn't already).
> > >resources are magically created - there's more money around, but
> > >the prices of things have to remain largely constant otherwise newbies
> > >will be unable to buy anything (that, or give the newbies ever larger
> > >amounts of money).
> >
> > The thing is, shop costs are pretty irrelevant. Ie, they just disappear
> > after a certain amount of time - if I have 2000 coins to my name or 200,000,
> > paying 1 coin for bread is not a big deal any way it goes. (This is part
> > of the problem, of course - very little money the players makes goes towards
> > her 'cost of living', unlike real life.)
>
> I don't think there is any reason it should... But again, I bet there
> are muds with this feature... certainly if it were deemed important, it
> would be something fairly easy to do.
I'm planning on making it a little harder to support your own
living costs, since as you advance in levels, tackling or killing a
monster (or group of them) on your own (killing being only part of the
game, but a good example), becomes undesirable for the rewards it offers
(excluding certain examples, like special quests).
Amassing your own army, land, and thus 'political' power becomes desirable
(and a good way to advance, in an albeit abstract way).
To cut a long story short, GR is correct again. It is not a tremendously
hard thing to do (well), and very easy to do badly.
> > >Or DO things remain in statis? I've heard of people adding more levels
> > >once too many players reached the top. Basically, these worlds survive
> > >by constantly changing.
> >
> > Yes, the muds change because they are hand-modified by the coders and
> > builders, but I'd like to see a world which was totally dynamic because of
> > what I, the player, does.
>
> Players should not and do not create.
More or less right -- players should not be able to freely create. I plan
on allowing high level players the ability to build (and shape) land with
a set of generic templates however. (This is hardly freestyle creation,
admittedly). I think the implications of the previous poster were that
what a player does should affect the world (if he exterminates the dwarves
in the mines, mithril should become rarer, and so forth).
Nathan F. Yospe
In article <3362085F...@imaginary.com>, bo...@imaginary.com wrote:
<you snipped the author, George. Who wrote this? Ah. Adam Wiggins.
Any relation to Ender? g,d&r>
:> Yes, the muds change because they are hand-modified by the coders and
:> builders, but I'd like to see a world which was totally dynamic because of
:> what I, the player, does.
:Players should not and do not create.
I think you misunderstood this, George. Imagine a world where, if
you dropped a match in the middle of a dry prarie, the brushfire
would result in a drop in the population of wuggaroos, the favorite
meat source for the city of Grendar, and the next time you went to
Grendar and ordered a 'roo dog, it cost twice as much. Incidentally,
I've done quite a bit of work with this for my gmud project, and will
be able to model systems like this. The price is flexibility... I
cannot change the setting without yanking everything above the
primary libraries, and a system that complex cannot afford the
overhead of an interpreted bytecode base, or even a dynamicly loaded
compilation or an internal language. The source database is in binary,
and huge, the world is entirely disc based, and the vulnerability to
corruption requires a constant vigilence. The GURU will require a very
large dedicated machine when it is done, on the order of an ONYX...
but it is still a very nice project, and will keep me busy for years
after Physmud++ is done and released and out of my hands.
George Reese
Nathan F. Yospe wrote:
>
> In article <3362085F...@imaginary.com>, bo...@imaginary.com wrote:
>
> <you snipped the author, George. Who wrote this? Ah. Adam Wiggins.
> Any relation to Ender? g,d&r>
>
> :> Yes, the muds change because they are hand-modified by the coders and
> :> builders, but I'd like to see a world which was totally dynamic because of
> :> what I, the player, does.
>
> :Players should not and do not create.
>
> I think you misunderstood this, George. Imagine a world where, if
> you dropped a match in the middle of a dry prarie, the brushfire
> would result in a drop in the population of wuggaroos, the favorite
> meat source for the city of Grendar, and the next time you went to
> Grendar and ordered a 'roo dog, it cost twice as much. Incidentally,
> I've done quite a bit of work with this for my gmud project, and will
> be able to model systems like this. The price is flexibility... I
> cannot change the setting without yanking everything above the
> primary libraries, and a system that complex cannot afford the
> overhead of an interpreted bytecode base, or even a dynamicly loaded
> compilation or an internal language. The source database is in binary,
> and huge, the world is entirely disc based, and the vulnerability to
> corruption requires a constant vigilence. The GURU will require a very
> large dedicated machine when it is done, on the order of an ONYX...
> but it is still a very nice project, and will keep me busy for years
> after Physmud++ is done and released and out of my hands.
I understood what you meant, I simply wrongly confused the issue by
using a different meaning of create.
The point I was trying to get at is that there are two senses of the
word create. In one sense I mentioned (the sense you did not intend),
players do not and should not do this (however, some mud bases allow
this).
In the other case, such modification does exist on some muds in a
limited fashion. Doing it in an extended fashion is extremely hard but
would be terrifically cool if it could be done in a reusable fashion.
Andrew Wilson
yo...@hawaii.remove.this.edu (Nathan F. Yospe) wrote:
>
>In article <3362085F...@imaginary.com>, bo...@imaginary.com wrote:
>
><you snipped the author, George. Who wrote this? Ah. Adam Wiggins.
>Any relation to Ender? g,d&r>
>
>:> Yes, the muds change because they are hand-modified by the coders and
>:> builders, but I'd like to see a world which was totally dynamic because of
>:> what I, the player, does.
>
>:Players should not and do not create.
>
>I think you misunderstood this, George. Imagine a world where, if
>you dropped a match in the middle of a dry prarie, the brushfire
>would result in a drop in the population of wuggaroos, the favorite
>meat source for the city of Grendar, and the next time you went to
>Grendar and ordered a 'roo dog, it cost twice as much. Incidentally,
>I've done quite a bit of work with this for my gmud project, and will
>be able to model systems like this. The price is flexibility... I
>cannot change the setting without yanking everything above the
>primary libraries, and a system that complex cannot afford the
>overhead of an interpreted bytecode base, or even a dynamicly loaded
>compilation or an internal language. The source database is in binary,
>and huge, the world is entirely disc based, and the vulnerability to
>corruption requires a constant vigilence. The GURU will require a very
>large dedicated machine when it is done, on the order of an ONYX...
>but it is still a very nice project, and will keep me busy for years
>after Physmud++ is done and released and out of my hands.
Stop smoking CRACK COCAINE!
Nathan F. Yospe
Andrew Wilson <Andrew...@cm.cf.ac.uk.NOJUNKMAIL> wrote:
:yo...@hawaii.remove.this.edu (Nathan F. Yospe) wrote:
:>corruption requires a constant vigilence. The GURU will require a very
:>large dedicated machine when it is done, on the order of an ONYX...
:>but it is still a very nice project, and will keep me busy for years
:>after Physmud++ is done and released and out of my hands.
:Stop smoking CRACK COCAINE!
Scuse me? Are you saying this is too ambitious? I have to disagree. This
is something I am doing to see if it is possible. Are you just off your
rocker because you are yourself smoking crack? Well, I suggest you stop.
I have witnessed a fatal heart attack due to crack. It was not pretty.
As for the ambition of the project: at the rate that computing power is
increasing, I suspect a machine with the power of an ONYX will be down
to desktop size and cost (under $6,000) within ten years. That will be
perfectly suitable for my needs. At that point, please reiterate your
opinion. Good day.
Michael Tillmann
>> Yes, the muds change because they are hand-modified by the coders and
>> builders, but I'd like to see a world which was totally dynamic because
of
>> what I, the player, does.
>
>Players should not and do not create.
>
Just wanted to step in and say I totally disagree: Players should play a
major part in any MU*, and that includes creating.. not the actually
hardcode perhaps, but anything else they should feel free to participate in.
Brian James Green
>I think there is a huge tendency by a lot of people to believe that if
>they have not seen it in a mud, it does not exist.
Heh, ain't that the truth. I do think that some people (including
myself) think that some aspects of MUDs and MUD development aren't
implemented as well or as widely as they should be. I think that
perhaps this is what people should say, instead of "It isn't out there".
>Adam Wiggins wrote:
>> >Or DO things remain in statis? I've heard of people adding more levels
>> >once too many players reached the top. Basically, these worlds survive
>> >by constantly changing.
>>
>> Yes, the muds change because they are hand-modified by the coders and
>> builders, but I'd like to see a world which was totally dynamic because of
>> what I, the player, does.
>Players should not and do not create.
That was not what he was saying, unless you have a broader definition of
"create" than I do. The point is that worlds are largely static, unless
the coders do something to change it. But, what about the players? Why
is it that killing all the Kobolds in the area doesn't affect the world
at all? Suddenly, one reset later, there is a whole new batch of
monsters to slaughter to gain a level. Why is it that when I save the
King's daughter, she gets "lost" or "kidnapped" again one reset later?
(Yeah, I know this isn't true on all MUDs, but see my comment above.
It's not implemented as well or as widely as it should be, IMHO).
Now, I realize that there are practical answers to these questiosn
(mostly along the lines of "it takes time to make a truly dynamic world
and to keep it up-to-date"), but I think this is something we could look
at and try to put some work into. The ability to alter the world (non-
catastrophically, of course) by a player would definitely add the sense
of coherence and purpose to the gameworld. I think the problem is, the
only people who are really advocating such changes are the "realism"
buffs and if you implement it fully realistically, the system could
break the game, leaving it rather unplayable.
Comments?
Derek Harding
Brian James Green wrote in article <5k0lql$4br$1...@news.iastate.edu>...
>"create" than I do. The point is that worlds are largely static, unless
>the coders do something to change it. But, what about the players? Why
>is it that killing all the Kobolds in the area doesn't affect the world
>at all? Suddenly, one reset later, there is a whole new batch of
>monsters to slaughter to gain a level. Why is it that when I save the
>King's daughter, she gets "lost" or "kidnapped" again one reset later?
>(Yeah, I know this isn't true on all MUDs, but see my comment above.
>It's not implemented as well or as widely as it should be, IMHO).
>
>Now, I realize that there are practical answers to these questiosn
>(mostly along the lines of "it takes time to make a truly dynamic world
>and to keep it up-to-date"), but I think this is something we could look
>at and try to put some work into. The ability to alter the world (non-
>catastrophically, of course) by a player would definitely add the sense
>of coherence and purpose to the gameworld. I think the problem is, the
>only people who are really advocating such changes are the "realism"
>buffs and if you implement it fully realistically, the system could
>break the game, leaving it rather unplayable.
The practical issues actually turn out to be very complex. We are trying to
model an entire world (not a trivial thing to do). Furthermore we're trying
to model a world where the inhabitants pop into and out of existance all
the time. This in itself raises issues which mess with the idea of players
have lasting effects on the world since internal consistency is broken
down.
I do wish to see players having a larger effect on the world, being able to
create objects, even objects that noone has thought of before. I also like
the idea that some objects, when in the possession of a given player cannot
be in the possession of any other player. I think though that it will be a
gradual process and one which probably will never be complete.
Ceres of Discworld
--
Derek Harding
Technical Director, Fusion Interactive
http://www.fusioni.com/~derek/
[email address deliberately mangled just change v to c]
john
Brian James Green <pch...@iastate.edu> wrote
: The ability to alter the world (non-catastrophically, of course)
: by a player would definitely add the sense of coherence and
: purpose to the gameworld. I think the problem is, the only
: people who are really advocating such changes are the
: "realism" buffs and if you implement it fully realistically, the
: system could break the game, leaving it rather unplayable.
the number of man-hours needed to code such cool dynamics
is impossible on most muds, given the thin spread of talent or
the fact that to work so hard on what is basically a one-time
effect is not seen as worthwhile, no matter how cool that one
trigger player might think it is.
what i've tried to do instead is to throw a larger plotline at the
players - give them that to deal with instead of allowing them
time to wonder if they can burn the fields of wheat on whim.
for example, we coded for weeks a goblin siege of one town,
with the odds in sheer numbers overwhelmingly in favor of
the raiders. i made sure that they won convincingly in every
test run before releasing the "event". stagger stages of the
invasion as periods of a few days each, and this Event could
last a couple weeks instead of 2 days only. enough time to
code the outcome - either BackToNormal with some chats
changed to "Remember when that siege..." and "Haha we won"
or change the town to a gutted, burning raze if not enough of
the players killed enough goblins to repulse the offensive.
it takes a long freaking time for each Event, but announce in
general when the event is to take place, send all your boys
and girls coding like madmen, and you're guaranteed a large
online turnout for 'participation' in the event. the problem is
motivating the coders :-\
one good side effect is that players say "Remember in '94
when we repulsed the castle siege" instead of "Remember
back when Hellion and Darkilon were around". there is a
sense of progression in the game that's missing in muds
which are like frozen picture frames without a timeline.
blah blah blah ;) - john
"This isn't rock'n'roll - it's genocide."
Martin Keegan
john wrote:
> Brian James Green <pch...@iastate.edu> wrote
> : The ability to alter the world (non-catastrophically, of course)
> : by a player would definitely add the sense of coherence and
> : purpose to the gameworld. I think the problem is, the only
> : people who are really advocating such changes are the
> : "realism" buffs and if you implement it fully realistically, the
> : system could break the game, leaving it rather unplayable.
> the number of man-hours needed to code such cool dynamics
> is impossible on most muds, given the thin spread of talent or
> the fact that to work so hard on what is basically a one-time
> effect is not seen as worthwhile, no matter how cool that one
> trigger player might think it is.
Isn't this already available on every TinyMUD derivative and LPs?
Mk
--
http://cyburbia.net.au/~martin/
http://cyburbia.net.au/~martin/cgi-bin/mud_tree.cgi
Martin Keegan
George Reese wrote:
> Most things in terms of world modeling have been done. Of course for
> any given trend, it is probably safe to say most muds don't have feature
> XXX. That is because in spite of the relative homogeneity of muds,
> there is still quite a bit of diversity.
> A lot of muds DO have inflation. Michael just appears to believe that
> if it does not exist on his mud that it does not exist at all.
I *did* say 'most muds' - I've seen muds with inflation, though you
are right to jump to the conclusion that I was probably one of those
"haven't seen X => X doesn't exist" people. You probably haven't seen
enough people who are NOT like this to assume that many exist etc etc :)
My point was that most 'kill stuff; eat stuff' muds (and if we define
most as 'more than half of publicly listed muds I think I'd be
correct) do not have any mechanism to resolve the economic
inconsistencies which arise in a world with indeplenishable resources.
George Reese
But the unimaginativeness of the masses has nothing to do with what muds
are currently capable of doing. Most muds suck; most muds will always
suck. They are not our measuring stick of the state of muds.
For any property X, it is true that most muds do not have X.
Ok, for the most part. That is why it is not useful in this subject as
I have framed to discuss things simply because pathetic muds do not do
them; or because certain good muds have chosen not to model those
things. The question is can they be model given the current state of
muds, and if so are some people at least doing it? If the answer is
yes, then IMHO the current state of muds supports that property whether
or not most muds use it.
Batzing
Isn't that what moo's and mushes do?
Chris Lawrence (Contra)
George Reese (bo...@imaginary.com) wrote:
: Players should not and do not create.
Care to support that massively general statement for the general case?
--
J C Lawrence Internet: co...@ibm.net
---------------(*) Internet: claw...@cup.hp.com
...Honorary Member Clan McFUD -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...